


Back in the Narrative

by blithelybonny



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Headcanon, Light Existential Angst, M/M, Meta, OMG CP 14 Days of Love, What is real?, neurodivergent character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9559340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithelybonny/pseuds/blithelybonny
Summary: How much of what is happening to him is because he's not real?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I used this [Rare Pair Generator](http://www.generatorland.com/usergenerator.aspx?id=14794), and I have to admit that I immediately discarded the first pairing that came up (Coach Bittle/Guy) but actually gave some serious wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey consideration to the second pairing that came up (Tater/Tater) before going with the third pairing.
> 
> Also this is basically a fleshed-out headcanon that Fry Guy is from the John Johnson/Abed Nadir school of meta. Because fun. :D Also this got weird as I started writing it. I have a lot of feelings.

“Heya Jake!”

The booming voice comes from Jake’s left-side. He turns slightly, looks up into the face of his Tinder date, and only just barely manages to keep from groaning aloud. He can immediately feel his mouth pulling into an unimpressed line, can feel his affect flattening like it’s a physical thing. “I thought you said your name was Adam,” Jake accuses by way of return greeting. Because the hulking great blond guy sitting next to him right now is _Holster_ , co-captain of the Samwell Men’s Hockey team, d-man, and musical theatre enthusiast?

Jake cocks his head at the sudden, unsettling rush of knowledge. It’s always so weird in his head when the characterization gaps fill in. And...ah, yep, there it is _Adam ‘Holster’ Birkholtz_.

So if this was the movies, now would be the part where the director inserts the montage: quick cuts of each time some dingbat from the ever-so-annoying SMH burdened Jake with his loud library cheering or his entire effing box of french fries.

But this isn’t the movies -- it’s a fan-narrative, and so Jake sighs gently and turns to face Holster more fully. “I mean, hey, Holster, how’s it going?” he asks. Holster gives him a kind of a bewildered look, and Jake gets that more often than not, so he adds, “Sorry, I’m having kind of a...weird day.”

“O-oh-kay, yeah, cool, all good,” Holster gets out, and the confusion seems to ebb away at least enough for him to smile again. He shifts over a little bit so that they’re seated closer together and ducks his head down to speak into Jake’s ear, like he’s got a secret worth sharing--like Jake doesn’t already know where this situation is heading. “So you follow the team then, yeah?” he says, all light and teasing.

“Who doesn’t follow the team?” Jake responds easily, rather than get into the complicated mechanics of the fact that sometimes he’s a little concerned that he doesn’t actually exist if he isn’t casually orbiting the hockey team.

Holster laughs, loud and bright and self-deprecating in a way. “Well, people who don’t like hockey, for one,” he says.

Jake hums a noise like he’s agreeing and replies, “There’s more to you than hockey.” It’s obviously true (because Jake has yet to meet anyone at Samwell who’s completely one-dimensional, and there’s also the whole ‘everyone comes to a story with different likes and different perspectives thing) but it also has the added benefit of sounding sort of nice, sort of flirty even, which was the original point of all of this. It makes Holster smile again and go kind of soft around the eyes. Jake’s mouth curves up a little in a match of its own accord, and when he realizes it, it gets a little bigger. “I mean, there must be, obviously,” he adds, as several of those things fill in and Holster’s outline gets a little more solid.

Holster laughs again, as he raises his hand to signal the bartender, who has been waiting out of frame until just now. “A rum and coke for me and a…”

“--Miller Light’s fine.”

“...a Miller Light,” he finishes and flashes the bartender (who is a cheerful-looking brown-skinned girl with hair so vibrantly red it can’t possibly be natural, whose name is Mariah, who hooked up with Wicks at a kegster last year, who...is taking too much of Jake’s focus away from his date with Holster) another smile.

Holster has a very nice smile.

Holster ducks his head, cheeks flushing pink, as he says, “Heh, thanks, bro.”

“You’re welcome,” Jake replies--even though he’s pretty sure he hadn’t meant to narrate aloud just then. Which is...interesting.

“Yours is nice too,” Holster compliments him, doing that leaning in and speaking just to Jake thing that he’d done before, and it’s...well it is nice to be crowded into a little in a way that suggests familiarity. It’s a way that suggests this is more than just a means to an end. It’s more than just the thrusting together of two characters who might not have any other reason to coexist if it wasn’t for, um...the little blond guy with the big brown eyes.

“Thanks,” Jake says.

“Hey, where’d it go?” Holster asks.

Because Jake’s mouth has gone all unimpressed again, but this time, it’s not for the humor of it. It’s because he forgot the protagonist for some reason, which is very strange and unsettling, and he’d much rather go back to a few minutes ago when everything was fine, and he was just annoyed by the mere presence of a hockey dude-bro because people seem to like that about him--

“Jake? You okay?”

“Ye-yeah,” Jake answers slowly, considering (pondering, wondering, bearing in mind… only three synonyms?). “I was just...I was thinking about how weird it was that you and I matched up.” And that is not true at all, but it serves its purpose well enough.

Holster chuckles. “I don’t know, I don’t think it’s that weird. You’re,” he blushes a little again, “pretty hot, and I mean, not gonna lie man, the first step is always the physical with Tinder, right?”

Oh, okay, yeah, that-- it’s time for the conflict. Jake sets his mouth in a line and raises one eyebrow just enough to convey his disdain. He says, “Yeah, I guess. Pretty simple really.”

Holster holds up his hands in a surrendering type motion and says, “Whoa, sorry man, I didn’t, like, you know, I didn’t mean it like negatively or whatever. You seemed cool when we were talking. It’s not _just_ the, you know, the physical stuff.”

Jake opens his mouth to retort something rude because he knows that’s how this is supposed to go now, but he...he doesn’t _want_ to this time. He doesn’t. He shouldn’t always have to be a sight gag. (He likes being a sight gag, honestly, most of the time, but this time feels different. Is that so wrong?) But it comes out anyway because all good stories need conflict. “I think I need to level with you,” he says, and his tone is hard.

“Um, okay?”

His tone still wants to be hard. But...no. No, he’s gonna level with Holster for real. He can do that. “So I mean, the thing is, is that it’s not really your fault that you and your bros annoy me because this is how I was written. And I mean...I mean, this isn’t like ‘Fun at Samwell with Jacob J. Jacobsen’ or something, this is somebody else’s story-- ah crap, what’s his name? Why can’t I remember...” Jake furrows his brow and looks down at the nondescript stretch of bar in front of him, and oh...oh no, that’s really not good at all, is it? “Shit.”

“Shit?” Holster repeats, looking be...be..

(Not _bewildered_ again, he’s already used that and there are so many other words to describe when a person is confused or flustered or befuddled or perplexed or rattled or--)

“Hey Jake, it’s okay, bro,” says Holster, laying one of his big paws on Jake’s shoulder and squeezing gently. It’s nice and grounding, and the stretch of bar before Jake is smooth and flat, and there’s a patch of sticky brownish gunk that’s probably a Manhattan because someone thought they were real fancy and told Mariah to slide it down, but the glass snagged on a rough patch two seats down and spilled.

Holster goes to remove his hand after a moment, but Jake reaches up to cover it with his own and says quietly, “No, it’s cool, you can leave it there. Um, if you want.”

“Okay, yeah,” Holster replies and flashes Jake a wide, toothy grin. “I mean, uh, yeah, I want.”

Jake spreads his fingers a little so that they can interlace with Holster’s on his shoulder, and Holster’s fingers curl a little too. So they’re basically holding hands, and even though the angle’s all kinds of weird, it’s somehow much nicer than all the other hands he’s ever held.

“So yeah,” Jake says, after a long, quiet moment, “I don’t actually like hockey all that much...” He lets go of Holster’s hand, but only so he can turn in his seat and face Holster straight on when he says, “...but you’re very...solid, and I do like that.”

Holster doesn’t say anything for a long, quiet moment too, but then, “Do you maybe wanna go for a walk?”

Jake briefly runs through the different scenarios that will result from the six answers he could give to the question and decides that he’d like, very much, to go with, “Yeah, that’d be cool” because while it’ll definitely fade to black, the walk around campus will culminate in a really nice kiss. And actually…

There’s snow all over, but it’s the bright and fluffy kind that’s just there to look pretty instead of being annoying to shovel. It’s not too cold, but just cold enough that after they’ve walked for about five minutes, Holster brushes up against Jake’s arm one too many times for it to be accidental anymore, and Jake takes the hint and lets Holster take his hand. Their fingers lace together again, and warmth spreads up through Jake’s whole body from that one point of contact.

They reach the Haus barely a minute later, even though they’ve been walking a long enough time that Jake’s breath has quickened from the exertion, and the bar is both right back there and across campus, and Holster’s really, really tall, but he’s solid and firm, as he presses Jake back into the door of the Haus, into the door of the attic bedroom he shares with Justin “Ransom” Oluransi who gives them a hint of a smile as he slips out the door after them (or maybe he was just conveniently not there in the first place, despite that Jake knows that Ransom and Holster are a package deal).

Holster cups Jake’s face with his big hands, runs his thumbs gently over Jake’s cheekbones, and then dips forward to ghost his lips over Jake’s own.

“Wait,” Jake whispers.

Holster waits.

Jake slides his hands down and rests them on Holster’s hips. He squeezes gently. Holster really is so solid, so real. “Okay,” Jake then says and closes his eyes, as Holster fits his lips perfectly to Jake’s.


End file.
